Telecommunications system typically employ some sort of signalling system for setting up and clearing connections (e.g. calls) handled by the telecommunications system. The signalling system in a signalling plane which is distinct from a user plane in which user data (e.g. user traffic) is transported through the telecommunications system. The International Telecommunications Union Telecommunications (ITU-T) developed an internationally standardized general purpose common channel signalling system called Signalling System exchange information. The signalling is done over a digital signalling network to execute functions such as call setup, routing, and control of wired and wireless calls. The Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), like other protocols, is susceptible to conceptualization on the layers of the OSI Reference Model developed by the International Standard Organization.
Typically certain transfer points must be utilized or interposed in the signalling network in order to transport signalling messages over great distance from an originating node to a destination node. In fact, several transfer points (e.g. signal transfer points [STPs]) may be used to route signalling message from the originating node to the destination node. The transfer points often take the form of switches that must be configured to accommodate the routing of signalling messages between the originating node and the destination node. Thus, the originating node must configure those transfer points (e.g. set up the switches of the transfer points), and each transfer point must route the signalling message to the next node (e.g. another transfer point), and so on until the destination node is reached.
When an application, such as a protocol converter, is to be added to a signalling network, then a node with the application has to be added to the signalling network. This will result in at least parts of the network, and most probably large parts of the network, have to be updated with new routing information, such that information will properly reach the new node, and information that has to be routed via the new node is properly routed. It is thus undesirable to change the network, it is also undesirable to add new nodes, as the number of nodes in a network is limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,788 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,852,660 both describe conventional methods of adding a protocol converter by means of adding a node in a signalling network. There thus seems to be a room for improvement in the techniques adding an application in a signalling system network.